I think it was coined in the 1800’s. And the word dragon dates from around the 13th century. (Old French, if I recall.) Nevertheless, I’m not sure how the age of these terms is relevant here. Of course, the concept of a dragon predates all English vocabulary by many many centuries.
I do agree with the scholars who assert that legends of dragons in various cultures were inspired by their unearthing dinosaur fossils. One didn’t have to be a trained paleontologist in ancient China or in medieval Europe to assume that excavated dinosaur bones were once part of “monstrous” living creatures. Dinosaur fossils are not hard to find in the Gobi desert and they probably played a major role in the prominence of the dragon concept in Chinese art and literature.
The spurious claim that dinosaurs are the “dragons” described in the Bible is a fairly recent fad. (It was part of my own background in a Young Earth Creationist “creation science” oriented church.) We have discussed Job 40 and the BEHEMOTH and LEVIATHAN topics multiple times on these forum threads. You might find them interesting to look up.
It was disappointing to see Ken Ham recirculate so many discredited tropes (e.g., the Cambodian temple’s stegosaurus stone relief carving.) But all of this is predictable when the objective is convincing a layperson audience that dinosaurs lived contemporaneously with people and thereby imply a young earth. Of course, that “logic” is flawed. There are plenty of ancient plant and animal species once thought extinct which were later found to be extant in modern times, even today, yet that in no way requires that the earth is a young planet. (Yes, Ham is also quite willing to misconstrue the meaning of the popular phrase “living fossil” as if it represents some sort of “gotcha” which destroys the credibility of scientists.)
This is one of the issues which helped me to leave my Young Earth Creationist church heritage. A half century has passed and YEC websites still list failed “evidence for a young earth” like “The Niagara Falls are only a few thousand years old. Not millions of years.” and “The volume and sediment deposit rates in the Mississippi River system’s delta formations can be measured and extrapolated to show that they are thousands and not millions of years old.” Indeed, there are a number of “101 Evidences for a Young Earth” lists on various YEC websites and it is humorous how many of the listed points are of the form “______ is consistent with a young earth.” Yes! Anything we observe which is not very old could be said to be consistent with a young earth, including the age of this forum, the founding of the USA in 1776, and the birth of Charlemagne.
And this brings up a fact of the ancient world and even the medieval world: People didn’t necessarily know if some animal description was based on reality or was merely a legend. Indeed, if there are some very entertaining “encyclopedias” of animal life from just a few centuries ago which included lots of entries which were little more than tall tales brought back to Europe by storytelling sailors. Also, reality and myth often got combined in fascinating ways. For example, a unicorn (a “one-horned” creature) was very real but today we know it as the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis, “nose-horn one-horn”.) No doubt there were merchants who returned to Europe and described an animal which was like a horse but had a horn growing out of its face, and artists easily drew the fanciful pixie pony which soon became prominent characters in fables and popular for modern-day greeting cards and children’s toys.
Now THAT is worth its own thread topic!
(After a lifetime in Biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, I would love to discover the “purest” explanation for the Genesis account!)
I thought it was already made clear that there is ZERO evidence for the “unfossilized” duck bill dinosaur bones. If I’m missing something from this thread (after I catch up from a multi-day absence), can you direct me to the peer-reviewed literature that verifies the claim that the hadrosaur fossils were not permineralized? (Was the Mori et al report confirmed in peer-review?)
That was my impression also. Did I misunderstand you, @r_speir?
I would suggest you read what Dr. Schweitzer has stated about the mischaracterizations of her
“soft tissue” discoveries. (Of course, the phrase “soft tissue” is often misunderstood by journalists.)
I’ve seen plenty of radiometric dating papers which discuss the “data noise” one can expect to see in virtually any sample of great age—regardless of whether modern contamination is present. (Rarely will the measurement yield a 0.00000000.) And are you not aware that there are a number well published natural processes which can add C-14 to some samples, which can make them poor candidates for carbon dating? Experts in C-14 dating are very familiar with statistical techniques for dealing with “data noise” (or should I say “signal noise”?) and how such makes C-14 dating beyond about 60,000 years ago virtually impossible.
Wow. You went way off the tracks with that one. You are confusing a popular label (dinosaur) with rigid taxonomies. Yes, ancient dinosaur species are extinct but that doesn’t prevent birds from being quite ubiquitous. Also, ancient Coelacanth species are also entirely extinct—but that doesn’t mean that the two modern species of Coelacanth are any less alive and swimming.
